Archeological and Physico-Geographical 
Reconnaissance in Turkestan. 
BY Raphael Pumpelly. 
INTRODUCTION. 
At the end of 1902 the Carnegie Institution voted a grant to nie "for the 
purpose of making, during the year 1903, a preliminar}- examination of the Trans- 
Caspian region, and of collecting and arranging all available existing infonnation 
necessar>- in organizing the further investigation of the past and present physico- 
geographical conditions and archeological remains of the region." 
The investigation was proposed because (i) there is a school that still holds the 
belief that central Asia is the region in which the great civilizations of the far East 
and of the West had their origins ; and (2) because of the supposed occurrence 
in that region, in prehistoric times, of great changes in climate, resulting in the 
fonnation and recession of an extensive Asian Mediterranean, of which the .\ral, 
Caspian, and Black seas are the principal remnants. 
It had long seemed to me that a study of Central-Asian archeolog\- would 
probably yield important e\-idence in the genealogy- of the great civilizations and 
of several, at least, of the dominant races, and that a parallel study of the traces of 
physical changes during Qxiaternar)- time might show some coincidence between 
the phases of social evolution and the changes in enviromnent ; further, that it miglil 
be possible to correlate the physical and human records and thus funiish a contri- 
bution to the tinie scale of recent geology. 
At my request Professor William M. Davis assumed charge of the plnsico- 
geographical part of the preliminary reconnaissance. 
ITINERARY. 
I left Boston March 18, accompanied by Mr. K. W. Pumpelly as assistant, and 
stopping over at London, Paris, and P.erlin, reached St. Peter.sburg on April 23. 
There I had to remain several weeks to perfect arrangements and obtain the papers 
nece-ssar}.- for an extended journey in Turkestan. On May 15 we left St. Petersburg, 
with Mr. Serge de Brovtziu as interpreter, and having been joined at Baku by 
Professor Davis and Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, a research assistant of the Carnegie 
Institvition of Washington, we cro.ssed the Caspian. 
I found throughout our sta>- in Turkestan that orders had been sent froin St. 
Petersburg to assist the expedition in all ways, and ever) thing was done to facilitate 

